Buzz Lightyear: Obsession
by doci7
Summary: Even as Buzz chafes under pressure from several close colleagues to learn to live for more than just to find and defeat his arch nemesis, he discovers that the upper echelons of Star Command have been withholding important information from him.


This isn't exactly in the Buzz Lightyear of Star Command universe but I am thinking of borrowing from that significantly in terms of how Star Command operates, and likely a few characters from the show will make appearances. Otherwise, it's much more based on the sort of intense rivalry between Star Command and Zurg's Empire that I personally felt Toy Story 2 leaned towards. Please read and review this, the prologue...

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The ear-splitting klaxons echoed from the walls of the dark and disheveled deck as the computer registered the feedback of external targeting sensors. Another volley of missiles would find their way deep into the already half-exposed recesses of his ship in the coming seconds. His restraints, belts fashioned into his command seat for little more than the aesthetic of stability, had been shredded within the first two strikes. Arms littered with cuts from airborne shrapnel, his muscles filled with the imperative to cling to the arms of the chair, though his taxed body lacked the strength to hold himself taught against his doom.

He drew a shaky breath. It seemed disappointingly shallow, but he didn't fight the impulse to hold the air, though his recessed insight whispered how irrelevant the reflex was. It was a reflex every remaining bridge crewman shared in; those who didn't were those who no longer could. Each trainee and officer had their eyes trained on the proximity radar; there was nothing left for them to do but follow the trail of the inbound missiles. But the captain, by requisite the most seasoned and capable crewman, still had a corner of his senses monitoring the pulse of the ruined command deck. He was thrown somewhat off-balance when a few crew members cried out in preemptive terror; too overcome by their cross-wired nerves to clearly predict the exact moment of impact. A half-second later the agony of their cries was made manifest.

Ripped side-long by the hastened spin of the ship on all three axes, the force was so great that for an instant his body represented nothing more than an awkward series of strung-together, free-falling weights; his will and capacity for self-propulsion were negligible against the momentum the imbedded projectiles channeled throughout the vast space craft. He was all but certain the force would be sufficient to squash his bones into gelatin. In a few parts of his body, that may as well have been the case. But the worst was yet to come. Deeply entrenched, the narrow profiles of the reinforced warheads had yet to fulfill their true function.

Before anyone had a chance to anticipate this second stage of destruction, it was upon them. The cruiser's superstructure, already negated on several sections of several decks, fully gave way under this latest barrage. The ship was torn in half. Chaos returned to the command deck as the frontal half of the cruiser began to careen in space-bourne somersaults. All artificial restraining fields were compromised. Most bridge consoles were inoperative; the balance of those still working were tied to utterly destroyed systems.

As the captain's broken body began to float freely in the spinning, powerless command deck, everything seemed suddenly peaceful, as it hadn't since the infinitely distant hours and moments before this attack began. He watched through dim eyes as everything around him gave silently into the freedom of zero-gravity. Torn shards of metal and plastic fittings, devices, and adornments danced gracefully through the air, as did the bodies of the bridge crew; some dead, some living, some in the indiscernible mid-ground between the two. The captain, sensing the direction of his homeworld by how its distant gravity slowly turned his stomach, spun his head to see as it was coming into their viewport. The glare of the sun filled the window as the indirect light refracted to his eyes. The bright sheet of red subsided as the viewport lowered its gaze to the planet itself; the sun nestled brilliantly onto its upper-left quadrant. For a moment, the beauty found its way to him. But the light of the sun was not the only light the world below was cast in. Dozens of brilliant white flashes were dotting randomly across the shadowed hemisphere. As the port continued its spinning past the final view of the besieged planet, the back portion of his cruiser came ominously into sight. Behind and around it were the wrecks of dozens of other ships, all smaller, all farther-off. More and more shipwrecks floated deafly up into and then beyond his window into space. The captain's eyes narrowed as he saw the first streaks of the amethyst nebula. He was going to get one last look at the doomsday armada that now gripped his entire home system. Dynamic, vibrantly-glowing swirls of slowly-blinking gas crawled up his screen as it tilted its view slowly into the deeper center of the nebula. A few more bright flashes of white light were sparking here and there; the last of his space-bourne comrades meeting their silent end. He was still amazed at how fast it had all happened, and yet how distant life as he had lived it now seemed.

Then he saw them. Onyx titans in the shadow of his dying world, caste against a fittingly purple canvas. So intricate, so dark, and so close together were these ominous vessels that they could easily have been mistaken for one large, infinitely complex warship. Judging by the subtle movement of the fleet, it remained entirely possible that the deathly outline _was_ mostly the profile of a single, gargantuan flagship. Whatever the case, the enemy force remained intact and completely unchallenged as the most gallant of his fellow warriors were finally picked-off.

No message had been sent to his world, demanding its surrender or declaring its captivity. No message would _ever_ be sent. They knew who it was that would, in a few hours' time, end a people and a way of life that had prospered for thousands of years. There could be no question. That was enough for _him_.

The captain let one last exasperated sigh slip into the void around him. A cold, pragmatic corner of his psyche assured him that his world wasn't the first; that it certainly wouldn't be last either. Star Command had made it quite clear that they weren't interested in protecting anyone outside the Galactic Alliance. _He_ had reign out here, in the Westerly Galactic Reach. There was no one out here to challenge his full strength; particularly not in the northerly Gamma Quadrant where his influence was most firmly established. The captain couldn't will away the horrifying image of him as it entered his mind. The slender, razor-sharp appearance of draping, regal violet armor, layer-on-layer. Chrome gauntlets polished beyond the possibility of blemish, bladed fingers at their end. A flowing and rigid cape, jet-black lined in blood-red. A sharp-edged visage of carbonic alloy with piercing, unblinking crimson eyes weighted in an eternal scowl. The Emperor whose only subjects were scarred worlds stripped of all life. Not entirely machine, but inhuman down to the frozen core. The Amethyst Tyrant. Zurg.


End file.
